


heartless

by quietlyintoemptyspaces



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (but in only comes in at the end and it's not really stated), (if there is, Asexuality, Author Is Sleep Deprived, But I'm not sure, Detachable Hearts, Healing, Hearts, M/M, No Romance, No Sex, Soul Bond, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Stiles is Unmarked, Stiles-centric, This might be symbolic, Werewolves don't have Soulmates, i have no idea how to tag this, it's very little)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-20
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 23:57:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2170194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietlyintoemptyspaces/pseuds/quietlyintoemptyspaces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Where’s your heart?” Scott asks with wide eyes. They’re nine, almost ten, and he’s never met anyone without a heart before.</p>
<p>Stiles shrugs and pulls his shirt back down before Scott can see that he’s soulless too. “My mom has it.” He doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t have to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	heartless

**Author's Note:**

> Right. So, I started this yesterday, and I probably would have finished it, if not for falling asleep halfway through. I was seriously surprised I didn't have to delete a million lines of single letters from my word document.
> 
> The idea for this came about from my over-active imagination being overly tired and listening to Howl by Florence and the Machine. One line, really, is what sparked this: "drag my teeth across your chest to taste your beating heart." Yeah, you know the one. Although there are no tasting of hearts or dragging of teeth in this, so.
> 
> Also, I'll be honest. I put absolutely no thought into the title.
> 
> It might be a little graphic in that hearts are detachable, and there is a scene where one that's been cut open has to be sewn back together.
> 
> Any mistakes, I'm sorry. Let me know.

Stiles is born with a large heart. It spills over the hollow of his chest.

 

His mother smiles, tells him it’s a good thing. Means he’s a lover, a protector, that whoever shares the mark on the other side of his heart, the brand hidden in the shadow of his chest cavity, will be very blessed to receive so much love.

 

When he’s five, when his mother shows him with shaking hands how to hold his heart properly, he stands on the stepstool in the bathroom, heart in his hands, and looks between the reflections of his toothbrush and the hand soap at his own, moves so that the vanity lights above the mirror can shine into his darkness.

 

He cries and runs for his parents, sitting with stressed smiles in the kitchen. It’s the first and the last time he drops his heart. It lays for long minutes at the bottom of the stairs, bruised from where he dropped it halfway down. His dad picks it up for him, holds it in his strong hands while Stiles cries into Claudia’s shoulder.

 

/*/*/*/

 

Stiles looks every morning before school, waits for a mark to show up, a scar, a brand, anything to show that he’s not meant to be alone. He wonders if this means he doesn’t have a soul, if he’ll never have a soulmate.

 

He looks every day until he’s eight, until his mother doesn’t get better, doesn’t come back from the hospital, until the only thing his dad has left of her is her heart, small and weak inside his chest, but still alive.

 

The day of her funeral, after the viewing, before the burial, Stiles sneaks into the room, lifts the lid of her casket. She looks surprisingly alive, but she’s not. There’s still a quality of lifelessness about her that Stiles can’t explain. Her hands are cold, when he lifts them, sneaks his heart out of his chest and sets the beating warmth of it in her grasp.

 

He’s not entirely sure why he does it. Maybe it’s so she won’t forget she’s loved. Maybe it’s because he’s never going to need it. Either way, an hour later, he watches as it’s buried with his mother, six feet under.

 

/*/*/*/

 

Stiles meets Scott a year after he buries his heart. Their dads are both in law enforcement, and they tend to drink together after work. Unfortunately, Scott’s dad isn’t as nice as Stiles’ when he drinks.

 

Stiles sees Scott’s heart for the first time, listening to their parents arguing, the threatening rattle of handcuffs echoing up from the dining room. It’s a little battered, but still bright with the color of youth, and Scott takes it out and lets Stiles touch it.

 

It’s supposed to be forbidden, but all children do it, at one point or another, too curious. But Stiles and Scott are best friends, _brothers_ even, and family is okay, family is allowed.

 

They ignore their dads downstairs, Melissa’s angry tears, and sit in Scott’s room, letting childish curiosity run its course. Scott shows Stiles his mark and Stiles shows Scott his emptiness. Scott frowns when he sees it.

 

“Where’s your heart?” he asks with wide eyes. They’re nine, almost ten, and he’s never met anyone without a heart before.

 

Stiles shrugs and pulls his shirt back down before Scott can see that he’s soulless too. “My mom has it.” He doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t have to.

 

Scott nods in the knowing way that all children do. “You can use mine if you want,” he offers, holding out a promise Stiles isn’t sure he can accept.

 

“Maybe,” Stiles says. It’s not a no.

 

It’s not a yes either.

 

/*/*/*/

 

Stiles’ dad goes to a doctor every two months, to makes sure his wife’s heart is still good, still living. He takes to using the weight room at work, to joining the BHPD baseball league, to monitoring his diet. That last one is the hardest. Or, at least, he pretends it is.

 

Forgetting his vegetables and making faces at meatless burgers gives Stiles something to focus on outside of his grief.

 

There are still arguments, and overwrought looks filled with frustration, but boys will be boys, and Stiles and Scott make quite the troublesome pair.

 

He doesn’t think much of it when Stiles stops taking his heart out at the kitchen table in the mornings, restless and still sleepy, passing it from hand to hand; doesn’t worry when Stiles doesn’t ask him anymore about marks and soulmates and whether he has one or not. He doesn’t think he has much reason to worry about Stiles at all beyond teenage antics and ridiculously off topic school papers.

 

Until he peeks into Stiles’ room one night and finds him passed out in an awkward twist half on his bed, half off. It’s not unusual. What catches his eye is Stiles’ fingers curled over the edge of his hollow chest, his heart obviously missing. He doesn’t know when it happened, but he can guess, and he wonders how the hell he missed something like that.

 

He drinks a few more fingers of whiskey than usual that night, but he figures he deserves a pass.

 

/*/*/*/

 

Werewolves are a thing.

 

The first thing Stiles asks about, after convincing Scott that yes, werewolves are totally a thing, is if his heart is different. It’s not, and neither is his mark, and for some reason, Stiles feels a little let down.

 

So he goes to the only other werewolf he knows, even if Derek is still a little mad about being accused of murdering his own sister. Details, Stiles figures, and marches into a hovel of a house he thinks only an Addams could love.

 

Derek corners him upstairs with gnashing teeth and starlight blue eyes. He’s wearing a tank top that’s wet with sweat, practically transparent, and Stiles can see the scarred mass of Derek’s heart through it. Stiles pushes him back with one finger, leaves a dry line in the sweaty sheen of Derek’s shoulder.

 

Derek stops growling at that, lets his features shift back to human, and looks at Stiles like he can’t believe it. Stiles doesn’t smell like fear, doesn’t smell like much of anything except for mild annoyance and an overabundance of curiosity, and for some reason it sets Derek’s teeth on edge.

 

“So…” Stiles drawls, leaning back against the wall behind him. “Does turning into a werewolf change any… _heart_ -type things?”

 

There’s a tick in Derek’s jaw that makes Stiles grin. “I don’t know,” he grits out after a long moment. “Now _leave._ ”

 

He’s half-pushed, half stumbles down the stairs, clinging to an unstable railing, tripping over his feet as he reaches the door. “I’ll take that as a no,” he calls out before he leaves.

 

Not that it really matters much.

 

/*/*/*/

 

Peter Hale doesn’t have a heart. There’s not a scarred mass, or a pile of ash, or a beaten, misshapen thing masquerading as a heart. There’s nothing in his chest, and where his mark should be, Stiles sees only unhealed scar tissue, still inflamed red. It looks infected.

 

When Peter looks at Stiles with madness in his eyes, Stiles thinks maybe it is.

 

Peter grins with sharp teeth and no soul, and for the first time Stiles worries about his lack of heart, lack of mark.

 

He refuses to become like Peter.

 

/*/*/*/

 

When Scott tells Stiles what he found in the tunnels beneath the Hale house, Stiles listens and he hears.

 

He goes back, after, and traces the walls in the torture room, edges around the rack. His shoes squelch in the murky water. It smells stale, and the room smells like electricity and blood, the salty sweat of terror.

 

Derek’s heart is on the table, cut open and pinned like a dead butterfly. In the bloody center of it floats a single purple flower.

 

Stiles probably stares at it for too long before he reaches out and takes it home.

 

He uses a needle and thread from one of his mom’s old sewing kits to piece it back together, pulls the wolfsbane from it and sets it aside. He’s not even sure Derek wants it back. He holds it in his hands, trying to decide the best thing to do.

 

In the end, he lifts his shirt, and settles Derek’s heart inside his empty chest.

 

/*/*/*/

 

He doesn’t tell anyone, even though, as werewolves, he’s sure they can tell. Derek, at the very least. No one mentions it.

 

It’s weird, after so long without his own, carrying another’s in its place.

 

Pressed shoulder to shoulder on the floor of the police department, Stiles figures it’s time. As much as he can, despite the panic building, he turns his head to Derek. “I have your heart,” he says, barely audible. He’s not sure how Derek will react. At least this way, they’re evenly matched.

 

He sees Derek’s nostrils flare out of the corner of his eye. “I know.”

 

“Oh.” It’s not what Stiles expects. If anything, there should be rage and snapping teeth and threats of bodily harm. He’s at a loss. “Well… do you want it back?”

 

Chaos breaks out before Derek can answer.

 

/*/*/*/

 

Stiles is glad he had the foresight to put Derek’s heart in a box before the game. It’s healed, with only a light scar added, but he suspects that after tonight, had he worn it beneath his jersey, it’d be broken anew, perhaps even beyond repair.

 

As it is, he openly laughs, pushed into the basement and watched by two pairs of terror filled eyes, when Gerard goes for his heart. The only thing he finds is an empty, unmarked cavern. It pulls him up short, fist poised in the air, but it doesn’t take him long to recover.

 

/*/*/*/

 

Stiles holds a bag of frozen peas to his face while he latches and unlatches the wooden box that holds Derek’s heart. He honestly has no idea what to do with it. He’s not even sure Derek wants it back. He sits there for a long time, long enough for the peas to turn to mush, before he hears a voice behind him.

 

“Werewolves don’t have soulmates,” Derek says, standing in the doorway of Stiles’ bedroom. He has dark shadows beneath his eyes, which Stiles can totally understand. “We can form the bond, but it doesn’t have to be forever.” He sighs, shoulders slumping just a bit as he sits at the end of the bed. “Scott formed his bond after he was turned, so it’ll be the same for him as it is for me.”

 

They sit in silence for a while, watching the moonlight make lines across the carpet through the blinds; it’s the only light in the room.

 

“I’m unmarked,” Stiles blurts suddenly.

 

Derek blinks fast and turns hazy eyes toward him. He looks half-asleep.

 

“And I don’t have a heart because I gave it to my mom when she died.”

 

In the space between them, Stiles hears Derek take a deep breath. “Do you ever regret it? Choosing to live without a heart?”

 

Stiles shrugs. “There wasn’t much of a difference. And it’s not like I’ll need it.” He looks down, scratches at the worn corner where the lacquer is faded; it’s an old box. “I had a big heart. She always said it was because I had more love to give, but… I don’t know. I figured it’d do her more good than me.”

 

Stiles falls asleep in his desk chair, feet propped up on the end of the bed where Derek sat when he first came in, and Derek rests against the pillows Stiles has stacked up against his headboard, head at an awkward angle.

 

When Stiles wakes, sun barely cresting the tree line, the box is still heavy in his lap and Derek is gone.

 

/*/*/*/

 

Stiles starts wearing Derek’s heart, lets it rest solid beneath his shirt, the thrumming thump of it comforting almost.

 

Scott gives him a funny look, the first time he hears it, but he doesn’t say anything about it.

 

His dad frowns in confusion when he catches Stiles rubbing at the edges where his skin meets Derek’s heart, sees the scarred mass that shouldn’t be there. “I thought…” he starts, before shaking his head and turning away.

 

It turns into a bit of a nervous habit, rubbing his chest; it’s not that it’s particularly itchy or irritated, really, but it’s something to do with his hands.

 

/*/*/*/

 

There’s a strange lump beneath Derek’s shirt where his heart should be. Stiles doesn’t think anything of it. Nobody does.

 

And then he smiles at Stiles, and Derek’s heart does a funny leap in Stiles’ chest.

 

/*/*/*/

 

“I’m not sorry,” Derek says, right before he takes his shirt off.

 

They’re in Stiles’ room, and once again, the only light comes from the moon. It’s enough light for Stiles to see his heart in Derek’s chest. It looks exactly like he remembers, but he doesn’t want to think about why it’s there, or how it got there.

 

Derek touches it reverently, fingers pressing lightly to the edges to take it out. He holds it out in both hands, but Stiles doesn’t step forward to take it. His back hits his bedroom door and he looks at Derek with wide eyes.

 

“What did you do? _Why_?” His voice breaks. He hates the way his chest feels at the thought of Derek digging up Claudia’s grave for a heart that no one needs.

 

“You healed my heart,” Derek says simply. “I wanted to return the favor, but… I think only you can heal your heart.”

 

Stiles steels himself, purses his mouth and looks at Derek. “You had no right.” He feels sick; he wonders what his mom thinks of him now, his heart no longer hers. Maybe she’s happy about it. “ _No. Right._ ” He’s on the verge of tears, he knows, but he kind of hates Derek right now, shoving this in his face.

 

“Maybe not,” Derek says. “But I think someone needed to.” He puts Stiles’ heart on one of the shelves of the headboard and slips his shirt back on before he leaves.

 

Stiles screams around clenched teeth and throws a lamp at the wall by the window. Even so, he wishes it was Derek’s heart shattering like the glass bulb.

 

/*/*/*/

 

He doesn’t touch his heart, just watches dust gather on its surface, waits for it to fade. But if it hasn’t withered in this long without touch, he doubts it’ll do it now.

 

Derek’s heart is back in the box, buried beneath his bed. It’s probably safest there, right now, considering how Stiles still feels about the whole thing.

 

His dad groans when he sees it, flicks some of the dust away from his kid’s heart, and then hugs him. “You can’t ignore it forever,” he says, and then presses a kiss to Stiles’ forehead.

 

Stiles still doesn’t touch his heart.

 

/*/*/*/

 

His dad’s right, though, as much as he hates to admit it. Stiles can’t ignore it forever.

 

He holds it beneath the faucet in the bathroom, lets lukewarm water wash the dust away. His own heart feels foreign in his hands, too big and too strange, but this is something he has to do.

 

Stiles spends the rest of the day curled up in the tub, letting the spray wash away tears as he presses his heart into the hole in his chest.

 

/*/*/*/

 

Sometimes he hates the feeling. It sneaks up on him, every so often, the grief and the overwhelming urge to toss his heart out with the trash, but he doesn’t, because his dad smiles like he’s proud and Scott gives him the best hugs and Derek doesn’t come to find him in his room anymore.

 

Derek doesn’t ask for his heart back, either one of them.

 

Scott elbows him when he sees the box. “ _Dude_.”

 

Stiles hates doing the right thing.

 

/*/*/*/

 

“I’m not going to say thank you,” Stiles says as a greeting, thrusting the box into Derek’s hand instead of saying hi.

 

Derek is shirtless and sweaty, eyebrows furrowed as he looks at the box. “What.”

 

“I’m not going to explain it to you either.” He doesn’t cross the doorstop, stands on the other side and resists the urge to punch Derek in his confused face.

 

Derek quirks an eyebrow and Stiles stomps a foot.

 

“Oh my god. Heal your own heart or whatever, geez.”

 

At least Derek doesn’t throw anything at him when he goes to leave.

 

/*/*/*/

 

Stiles still rubs at the edges where his heart overflows, falls asleep with his fingers curled over his chest.

 

He wakes with an extra arm tucked over his waist, fingers twined with his and pressing lightly into his heart. Derek ends up with an elbow in his sternum and Stiles kicking him onto the floor. He lands in a jumbled heap on the floor with sleep-hazy eyes trying to focus.

 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Stiles’ voice isn’t as loud as it could be, but there’s a possibility his dad is down the hall, still sleeping or getting ready for work. Finding Derek in his son’s room is not something Stiles wants his dad to worry about first thing in the morning.

 

“Well, I _was_ sleeping.” Derek doesn’t even attempt to sit up.

 

“In _my_ bed!” Stiles hisses. “You don’t sleep _in my bed_!”

 

Derek flops an arm over his eyes and yawns. “My heart is fond of you,” he says, like it’s no big deal.

 

“Bullshit.”

 

In a flash, Stiles is yanked down on top of Derek, Derek’s other arm thrown around his back to hold him down. There’s an awkward amount of sheets and comforter between them, not that Stiles really minds that part. It’s the part about lying on top of Derek that he wants to change.

 

“I’m a werewolf, Stiles, and you had my heart for a long time,” Derek mumbles into the hair on the top of Stiles’ head. “Your heart’s fond of me, too.” When Stiles makes a disbelieving noise in his throat, Derek tights his arm. “It was touch-starved; it latched on to me when I put it in my chest.”

 

Derek is warm, like an electric blanket, and for a werewolf, he makes a surprisingly good pillow. Sleep keeps dragging Stiles down, pulling at his eyelids even though he wants to dispute this whole theory Derek has going on. “So, because werewolves are possessive bastards and I didn’t have a heart for eight years, we’re what? Bonded now? Is that why you want to sleep with me?”

 

This time it’s Derek who makes the noise. “No. And I don’t want to sleep with you.”

 

“Maybe we should review that part about you _in my bed_ again, yeah?”

 

Derek’s chest rumbles beneath him in what he is sure is a growl. “ _Not_ like that.”

 

Stiles shifts his leg and snorts. “Yeah, and that’s just the blanket I’m feeling now, right?” Derek growls again, and pulls at the sheets. Okay, so maybe it is the blanket. “I hate you.”

 

“You like me,” Derek argues. His skin feels like summer and Stiles slurs his words a bit; he feels sluggish with sleep.

 

“Uh uh. Hate. Lots of it. Heaps of hate. All for you, buddy.”

 

He feels Derek’s grin against his forehead before he slips back into oblivion. “Yeah. You, too.”

 

/*/*/*/

 

In the morning, if Derek wakes curled up on floor with tears in his eyes because Stiles accidently misplaces his knee while he tries to get up, well, it’s not Stiles’ fault.

 

It’s not.

**Author's Note:**

> I think I read a story like this once, more than a few years ago, in that there were hearts in boxes. I'm pretty sure it was Kingdom Hearts.
> 
> I also had fun with my line breaks, but I totally blame that on Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes.


End file.
